Funny Girl: A Novel

Set in 1960's London, Funny Girl is a lively account of the adventures of the intrepid young Sophie Straw as she navigates her transformation from provincial ingnue to television starlet amid a constellation of delightful characters. Insightful and humorous, Nick Hornby's latest does what he does best: endears us to a cast of characters who are funny if flawed, and forces us to examine ourselves in the process.

About a Boy

Will Freeman may have discovered the key to dating success: If the simple fact that they were single mothers meant that gorgeous women - women who would not ordinarily look twice at Will - might not only be willing, but enthusiastic about dating him, then he was really onto something. Single mothers - bright, attractive, available women - thousands of them, were all over London. He just had to find them.

Slam

Just when everything is coming together for Sam, his girlfriend, Alicia, drops a bombshell. Make that ex-girlfriend: because by the time she tells him she's pregnant, they¿ve already called it quits. Sam does not want to be a teenage dad.

Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout

A searing account of her search for identity and true self, Tranny reveals the struggles and victories that Laura Jane Grace, the lead singer of the cult punk rock band Against Me!, experienced in her quest for gender transition. Illuminated by Laura Jane's never-before-published journal entries reaching back to childhood, Tranny is an intensely personal and revelatory look inside her struggles with identity and addiction.

Mister Monkey: A Novel

Mister Monkey - a screwball children's musical about a playfully larcenous pet chimpanzee - is the kind of family favorite that survives far past its prime. Margot, who plays the chimp's lawyer, knows the production is dreadful and bemoans the failure of her acting career. She's settled into the drudgery of playing a humiliating part - until the day she receives a mysterious letter from an anonymous admirer and later, in the middle of a performance, has a shocking encounter with Adam, the 12-year-old who plays the title role.

Britt-Marie Was Here: A Novel

Britt-Marie can't stand mess. She eats dinner at precisely the right time and starts her day at six in the morning because only lunatics wake up later than that. And she is not passive-aggressive. Not in the least. It's just that sometimes people interpret her helpful suggestions as criticisms, which is certainly not her intention. But at 63, Britt-Marie has had enough. She finally walks out on her loveless 40-year marriage and finds a job in the only place she can: Borg, a small, derelict town devastated by the financial crisis.

Us: A Novel

Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

One of the comedy world's fastest-rising stars tells his wild coming of age story during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed. Noah provides something deeper than traditional memoirists: powerfully funny observations about how farcical political and social systems play out in our lives.

Heroes of the Frontier

Josie and her children's father have split up, she's been sued by a former patient and lost her dental practice, and she's grieving the death of a young man senselessly killed. When her ex asks to take the children to meet his new fiancée's family, Josie makes a run for it, figuring Alaska is about as far as she can get without a passport. Josie and her kids, Paul and Ana, rent a rattling old RV named the Chateau, and at first their trip feels like a vacation.

The Nix: A Novel

It's 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson - college professor, stalled writer - has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn't seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she's reappeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the Internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high school sweetheart.

A Man Called Ove

Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon - the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell". But behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness.

The One That Got Away: A Novel

Abbey Lahey is a married, harried working mother of two, struggling to make ends meet in a blue-collar suburb of Philadelphia. When a tumble down a Nordstrom escalator lands her in an alternate reality, Abbey finds herself happily married to the one who got away - a dashing Philly blueblood she met briefly years earlier - and living a Cinderella life of privilege and luxury.

Truly Madly Guilty

In Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty takes on the foundations of our lives: marriage, sex, parenthood, and friendship. She shows how guilt can expose the fault lines in the most seemingly strong relationships, how what we don't say can be more powerful than what we do, and how sometimes it is the most innocent of moments that can do the greatest harm.

Someday, Someday, Maybe: A Novel

From Lauren Graham, the beloved star of Gilmore Girls and Parenthood, comes a witty, charming, and hilariously relatable debut novel about a struggling young actress trying to get ahead - and keep it together - in New York City. It’s January 1995, and Franny Banks has just six months left of the three-year deadline she set for herself when she came to New York, dreaming of Broadway and doing "important" work. But all she has to show for her efforts so far is a part in an ad for ugly Christmas sweaters, and a gig waiting tables at a comedy club....

Nobody's Fool

Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its sly and uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool is storytelling at its most generous.

Based on a True Story: A Memoir

As this book's title suggests, Norm Macdonald tells the story of his life - more or less - from his origins on a farm in the-back-of-beyond Canada and an epically disastrous appearance on Star Search to his account of auditioning for Lorne Michaels and his memorable run as the anchor of Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live - until he was fired because a corporate executive didn't think he was funny. But Based on a True Story is much more than a memoir; it's the hilarious, inspired epic of Norm's life.

We're All Damaged

Andy Carter was happy. He had a solid job. He ran 5Ks for charity. He was living a nice, safe Midwestern existence. And then his wife left him for a handsome paramedic down the street. We're All Damaged begins after Andy has lost his job, ruined his best friend's wedding, and moved to New York City, where he lives in a tiny apartment with an angry cat named Jeter that isn't technically his. But before long he needs to go back to Omaha to say good-bye to his dying grandfather.

Publisher's Summary

From the beloved New York Times best-selling author, a quintessential Nick Hornby tale of music, superfandom, and the truths and lies we tell ourselves about life and love.

Annie loves Duncan - or thinks she does. Duncan loves Annie, but then, all of a sudden, he doesn't. Duncan really loves Tucker Crowe, a reclusive Dylanish singer-songwriter who stopped making music 10 years ago. Annie stops loving Duncan, and starts getting her own life. In doing so, she initiates an e-mail correspondence with Tucker, and a connection is forged between two lonely people who are looking for more out of what they've got.

Tucker's been languishing (and he's unnervingly aware of it), living in rural Pennsylvania with what he sees as his one hope for redemption amid a life of emotional and artistic ruin - his young son, Jackson. But then there's also the new material he's about to release to the world: an acoustic, stripped-down version of his greatest album, Juliet - entitled, Juliet, Naked.

What happens when a washed-up musician looks for another chance? And miles away, a restless, childless woman looks for a change? Juliet, Naked is a powerfully engrossing, humblingly humorous novel about music, love, loneliness, and the struggle to live up to one's promise.

I'm not reviewing the content of the book, quite excellent, especially if you are a Nick Hornby fan, but rather the recording. It was brilliant using the three narrators. I also enjoyed the musical segue ways.

I thouroughly enjoyed every bit of this book. The narrators were all fantastic. The characters were so well drawn I felt like I knew them all by the end of the book. It was witty and funny and serious and sad all at the same time. It was an all around excellent effort on Hornby's part. Loved it. Can't say that enought. I'm going to check out his other work now too.

I liked this novel a great deal -had never read anything by Hornby before but it made me want to read other things by him- and the narration with the English and American accents makes it even more enjoyable. I felt the author understood and explained the different characters very well, especially the woman (which surprised me) and the musician. There were many amusing parts, the dialogue and the feelings and motivations of the characters felt true, and I almost felt I became friends with (or at least would want to, in the case of the woman and the older man-musician) the characters. At the end, I wished the book could have been two or three times longer, so as to not have to say goodbye to the characters.

Enjoyed it all. I know people like each of the main characters in the book - they felt very real and the writing was insightful.
Readers were fantastic - they really pull you in and make you think you are listening to the real characters.

Would you consider the audio edition of Juliet, Naked to be better than the print version?

Equal to the print edition. Different experience, but both just as good -- best possible read, best possible listen.

What did you like best about this story?

Nick Hornby returns to the territory of High Fidelity, the book that put him on the map and that remains his best work (not that the rest is anything less than pretty darn good). It's about a relationship set to the soundtrack of their lives, but unlike High Fidelity, which was about a lot of different music, Juliet Naked is about one particular (fictional) musician.

As a huge pop/rock aficionado since I first saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show 50 years ago, as an ongoing follower of all of the twists and turns of rock music over the last half century (like Hornby), it's wonderful to read books about real people and their relationships and their relationship to music (to that kind of music). The couple at the center of Juliet Naked are devoted to their Bruce Springsteen-like figure in a way that defines their life and their relationship. How that unorthodox menage a trois evolves is the best aspect of this story.

Have you listened to any of Bill Irwin’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

First of all, Bill Irwin is not the only narrator -- there are three, each taking over when the narrative switches among the three main characters, and they're all very good. But with respect to Bill Irwin, I have to say that I haven't heard him read any other books, but I'm a big fan of his acting and clown work. I don't even call him Bill Irwin -- to me, he will always be Mr. Noodle (from Sesame Street, which I used to watch with my daughters when they were little).

In fact, we met Bill Irwin at the stage door of a Broadway show he was in, by which time my daughters were teenagers, and they were too shy to tell him how much they liked Mr. Noodle, but not me -- I told him that I liked his character as much as the kids did. So, to hear him narrate an audiobook -- and such a good one as this -- is a bonus treat for me. How many people can say they're big Bill Irwin fans? Why would they? But I am.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I find it hard to laugh out loud when I'm by myself, whether it's reading or watching TV or movies or even listening to comedians. I believe comedy is a communal experience when it's at its best, with everyone's laughter feeding off everyone else's laughter. That said, this book did make me laugh out loud at times. Chuckle mostly, but once in a while, laugh out loud.